republicans have moved to the debt ceiling debate to may 18. you have all of these self- imposed economic wounds. we should be dealing with them all at once in a comprehensive manner. if we cannot deal with it for a 10 year period, deal with it for the remainder of the fiscal year. that is what the house democratic alternative did. we would replace the sequester with the hotel -- with deficit reduction achieved over a longer amount of time. host: ray locker is the national security editor with "usa today ." he is here to talk to us about the sequestration's affect on defense spending. what exactly is sequestration? guest: it means mandatory budget cuts. they were part of a 2011 deal that congress and the white house agreed to. they were worried about raising the national debt ceiling, which is $16.4 trillion. republicans hoped to try to force a general deduction of overall spending. it came down to this deal where it was they would do a supercommittee that would come up with a deal by the end of 2011. they did not. if they did not reach a deal